Amber-G330
|specialty=Incendiary Weapons |sigweapons= |rank= Specialist (E-4) |tag=G330 |serviceno= |class=III: Gamma Company |branch=UNSC Army (former) |unit=*Team Machete (former) *Kru'desh Legion |affiliation=* (former) * |notable= }} A fearless combatant and skilled pyrotechnician, Amber-G330 had one failing as a Spartan—a conscience that came before her loyalty to the UNSC. Often questioning the ethics of what she and her friends in Team Machete were and what they were made to do, Amber reached a breaking point when they were dispatched to secure a Forerunner installation and ordered to exterminate a settlement of Covenant civilians to conceal the location of a . Alone among her comrades in rejecting the command, she was confronted by her teammate Morgana-G018 while attempting to prevent the attack and in their ensuing struggle, killed her close friend. In grief and fear of reprisals by the UNSC both for disobeying orders and the murder of a Spartan, she fled beyond the borders of human territory and was pursued by her team leader Kodiak-G114 on ONI's command, believed dead after their culminating encounter. She in fact survived, and after wandering the frontier for some time without the boosters needed to stabilize her mental condition nor success in her few attempted ventures, was imprisoned in the ruins of Forsaken Solitude by Kig-Yar pirates, where she was eventually found by her predecessor as a rogue, Simon-G294. Biography Becoming a SPARTAN Early Life and Conscription Late in 2537, amidst the chaos of an increasingly desperate Human-Covenant War, a young woman named was rapidly making a name for herself in the as one of Section Three's most promising black ops agents, completing mission after mission with a perfect rate of success. Her remarkable career caught the attention of Captain , the black ops division's head, and soon after meeting, their interest in one another became more than professional. Although a romantic relationship entailed severe risks for people of their stations, the dangers only added to the excitement of their affair, until in October of the next year when Ilsa became pregnant. Though it had been unexpected, both found they wanted to have the child together, and Ilsa was hidden away aboard Aaron's personal in deep space while he covered up her disappearance by listing her on a classified operation. Ilsa gave birth to their daughter Amber nine months later, on July 19th, 2539. Although Aaron came to stay with them as often as he could, his position within ONI demanded his presence both to handle major operations and thwart his enemies within the organization itself who might have used Ilsa and Amber against him, and his relationship with Ilsa became strained as a result. She longed to return to service, but in Aaron's absence needed to stay to take care of their daughter. Still, she was a loving parent, and Amber's childhood aboard the ship was spent playing and learning from her mother, including everything from academic subjects and the running of a ship to the exercises Ilsa practiced to keep her skills honed. Ilsa never dared, however, to tell her daughter of her career. Through her mother's careful instruction, Amber grew into an extraordinarily intelligent and physically able child. Despite his best efforts to keep them safely hidden, Aaron's worst fears were realized in 2544 when one of his opponents, an agent codenamed THORN, acquired evidence of his tryst and the child it had produced, and threatened to send it all the way to Vice Admiral . THORN offered Gibson a choice: give up the child, who possessed near-ideal genetic traits for a SPARTAN-III, to the program which he had helped approve or let the commander-in-chief of ONI deal with his indiscretion as she saw fit. For once in his career not knowing what to do, Aaron went to them at once, breaking the news to Ilsa with a heavy heart. After a night to think it over, Ilsa convinced Aaron to take the former option, knowing humanity's losing battle with the Covenant would be best served if Amber were to take up her parents' fight. Putting Amber to sleep in a cryostasis pod, their ship met with a civilian freighter hired by THORN for the transfer, and relinquished custody of their daughter to the Beta-5 personnel onboard. Returning to their duties, Aaron and Ilsa found themselves painfully reminded of their daughter whenever they were together and drifted apart, eventually cutting ties to one another when Ilsa volunteered as a subject for the first phase of the . Amber, in the meantime, would be taken to begin her training as a SPARTAN-III on the ONI-classified world of . Training and Augmentation When Amber awoke from suspended animation, she was terrified, surrounded by strangers on a strange ship. She'd been transferred aboard the UNSC Themistocles, one of several vessels making round-trip voyages across the colonies to collect the Spartan-III candidates for Gamma Company. It was one of the agents responsible for her abduction, Erin Coney, who calmed her down and explained her situation: she would likely never see her parents again, but she was where they wanted her to be. By becoming strong enough to protect others, Erin told her, they knew she would become strong enough to protect herself. Not wanting to let them down, Amber made the choice to take part in the program. As the last candidate collected, however, her fellow prospective Spartans had already had weeks to begin forming bonds, and as Amber joined them, she soon began to feel isolated and lonely. Others, fortunately, took an interest in her first. Hearing the last candidate had been collected, three boys named Carlos, Kodiak, and Dyne snuck out of their quarters during a sleep shift to meet her, and all quickly became friends. When the Themistocles reached Onyx, the children were ferried to the planet's surface aboard Pelican dropships for introduction by their head trainer, Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose, who would become a mentor and role model for the young Spartans in years to come. To begin on that path, however, the children had to pass an initial test: dropping from the Pelicans on aerial descent packs in the dead of night. Though she, like the other recruits on her Pelican, hesitated to make the jump, she found courage when Kodiak volunteered first and Dyne recklessly jumped out of turn after. Despite a few scrapes and bruises to call her own in landing, Amber survived her fall, as did all the other candidates who dared to jump. When those who'd passed were assembled the next day, Amber was given her G330 tag, but was shocked to learn Carlos hadn't found the courage to do the same and been cut from the program. Grieving for the loss of one of her few friends among the other trainees, Amber distanced herself from the others, even as Kodiak tried to reach out to her. Having grown up alone on a starship to that point in her life, Amber quickly found solitude to her liking and would strike out on her own at any given opportunity. The company's early training, conditioning the trainees to get into optimal physical shape, provided plenty: miles-long runs through Onyx's woods meant all she had to do was run faster or slower in the strung-out pack, escaping from the ruthless exercise regime by hiding curled up in supply crates under packets of MREs, and breaking out of her locked barracks at night when she couldn't stand to hear the other candidates breathing in their sleep. This stubborn independence streak saw Amber marked as one of the first contenders for Gamma Company's potential crop of , but while she proved self-reliant in physical exercises, this same aversion to interacting prevented Amber from seeking help when she started falling behind in several of the candidates' many academic subjects, and she was soon dropped from the watch list. Sensing the change in the project overseers' interest in her, Amber's struggling with classes and inability to approach others for help led to more and more stress, and began effecting her performance in other studies until an unexpected connection with Shepard-G127 intervened. A favorite game of the company's drill instructors was to fill a miles-wide stretch of demanding terrain with obstacles and traps, then give the trainees a short head start to reach the other side before hunting them down with VISRs and TTR. It was during one of these exercises that Amber came across a fellow trainee caught in one of their tormenters' snares, and instead of letting his error slow pursuit of herself, spent the time needed to cut the boy loose before running off again, though the delay meant they were both caught shortly after. Despite leaving him behind, the boy approached her after the exercise and offered to help her with a few of the classes they shared, having noticed her struggling before. Presented with an ongoing excuse, Amber found herself more at ease with accosting the other trainee, who introduced himself as Shepard, and both his guidance and his friendship contributed to the quick rebounding of her scores. Having made no shortage of friends himself, Shepard also became a means through which Amber connected with many of their classmates—though, to her embarrassment, among Shepard's closest cohorts were Kodiak and Dyne, whom she feared may have felt she'd rejected by withdrawing from earlier. Her adjustment to being part of the group came none too soon; Gamma Company began being grouped into randomized, five-candidate teams expected to continuously work together for days or weeks at a time. Amber was relieved to find herself with familiar faces among her first two rotations, including Shepard both times, but in the third was surrounded only be strangers. She started to withdraw again, hurting her ability to work with her teammates, failure which only further encouraged her to shrink back. When the next rotation came, however, one other from the third team went with her: Morgana-G018. Though she could be haughty and unabashedly critical, Morgan and Amber naturally gravitated toward one another and quickly developed a close friendship. Their respect for one another's independence, Amber's born of apprehension for troubling others and Morgan's due to a lack of patience for them, enabled each to keep out of the other's ways and often complement each other's strategies, if not work directly as a team. The pair were kept together for the remaining company rotations, but Amber still made a point of disappearing often for time to herself, and this very thing led her and Morgan both to an assignment neither could have expected. Hiding in any area a trainee wasn't supposed to be, Amber would almost routinely run into Kodiak and Dyne, whom had long since earned a reputation as troublemakers even among the unruly children of Gamma Company. One particular night, Amber slipped into a storage shed to avoid the next morning's early reveille only to be jarred awake in the middle of the night by her crate moving. Afraid of being caught, Amber kept still and silent as the crate was carried outside, only for some kind of commotion to break out and end in the crate being dropped on its side and tumble open amid panicked shouting. Dazed and bleary-eyed, Amber was stunned to find herself surrounded by Kodiak, Dyne, and a half dozen armed drill instructors shining flashlights on the three of them. Marched to Commander Kurt Ambrose's office, the trio joined Morgan and another girl Amber didn't know to await punishment for breaking curfew, among other infractions. To their surprise, Ambrose seemed almost pleased; despite a warning there would be repercussions later, he congratulated the five on becoming the first permanent formation assigned in Gamma Company: Team Machete. Though she could have expressed as much displeasure with the arrangement as Morgan, at the time she was far too tired and simply fell asleep upon returning to their barracks. The subsequent months proved a rocky start for the undisciplined and uncooperative team, but with a common enemy in Staff Sergeant Pete Stacker, their drill instructor, to unite them in plotting revenge, their first outside work together began to surface as teamwork in their actual training. Amber, however, remained stubbornly headstrong, feeling while Morgan came into her own as a coordinator and Kodiak developed the self-confidence to be a leader, she had yet to find her own place despite generally outpacing her teammates. Listening to Commander Ambrose's rhetoric about the role of Spartans in bringing an end to the war made her desperate to carve out a niche for herself, and she found it during one of the many brief phases familiarizing them with nearly all facets of warfare employed by the UNSC: incendiary weapons. The indiscriminate application of pyrosene-V for area denial and asset destruction by the M7057 flamethrower she learned to use was well suited to Machete's developing penchant for sabotage, and the former who instructed her helped Amber excel as she'd desired in her chosen specialization. Finally, almost seven years after their abduction, the candidates were introduced to , the human augmentation procedures which would metamorphosize them from peak-condition humans to true, superhuman Spartans. Though Ambrose was transparent about the risks involved, showing the company archived footage from , it still marked the first time Amber found herself with doubts about the program. Unlike the majority of Gamma Company's trainees, Amber hadn't lost her family to the Covenant they would be deployed to fight, and wasn't sure she wanted to risk dying in a painful, failed augmentation for the chance to live to fight. Yet, knowing the stories of her teammates and friends who had lost their loved ones compelled her to join them in protecting the human race. Deeply conflicted, and having never asked before what she wanted for herself, Amber slipped out of her team's barracks that night in what would quietly mark Gamma Company's last escape attempt. For days, she evaded a full-scale search by VISR-equipped drill instructors, Pelican search patterns, and even her fellow trainees before voluntarily surrendering to Team Saber and immediately electing to take part in the augmentations. Erin Coney, one of Machete's overseeing instructors, raised concerns about her motivations for escaping, but Commander Ambrose took it as the trainee's way of dealing with her choice—and a demonstration of Gamma's capabilities—and accepted her volunteering without further question. Taken aboard the on February 19th, 2551, Amber and her 329 comrades submitted to the augmentations which would forever change them. In addition to those which Alpha and Beta Companies had undergone before them, however, three drug compounds were illicitly added by Commander Ambrose which were kept secret even from the other staff: 009762-OO, a mind-altering mutagen which would intensify the candidates' aggression response and reduce their susceptibility to shock, and two counter-agents meant to stabilize the drastic effects of the first. While these additives would enable Gamma Company's Spartans to fight through wounds far beyond what even the SPARTAN-IIs could have endured, it would also damage their cognitive functions without steady supplements of the counter-agents. Unaware of these additions, Amber awoke late the following day to find her body unfamiliar and hardly responsive. She, like every other member of her company, had survived, but would now face nearly a year with them getting used to their new abilities, relearning everything from standing to combat drills with the augmentations accounted for. Amber welcomed these challenges and even the life of constant danger which lay beyond with relief, knowing if she were to die from here on, it would be for something. Battle of Earth By the time Gamma Company received its deployment orders, its graduated Spartans were more than ready. Ambrose had played for time to ensure they had fully recovered, long enough for plans for one operation intended for the company to fall through, and some of the Gammas themselves began to feel he was holding them back. A handful of teams were called ahead of the main force for special missions—which Machete was not considered for—until at last in late October, 2552, when a squadron of prowlers arrived with news that , the UNSC's foremost military bastion, had fallen. Though some considered this to mean the war was already lost, Gamma Company had been called upon to undertake missions critical to fortifying the desperate defense of Earth, and none were willing to give up the fight before they'd had their say. Unlike their predecessors, Gamma would not deploy as a single unit, dividing among the prowlers which would ferry the teams to their many individual objectives, with Machete joining the largest singular force to be stationed on Earth itself in anticipation of a coming Covenant attack. By the time the prowlers exited slipspace in the Sol System, however, that attack had already come. Following the rout of ill-prepared advance fleet, a massive invasion force larger even than the one that destroyed Reach arrived and laid planet-wide siege to humanity's homeworld. In East Asia, the Covenant successfully landed a full of Sangheili-led troops and a three-day ground campaign had resulted in crushing defeat, ceding mainland China to the invaders as a staging area. The former islands of Japan stood as a barrier east, as well as a store for stockpiles of Chinese-manufactured materiel, and Machete would be among the handful of Spartan teams aiding in its defense. Before even setting foot on the ground, they were given their first objective: to repel scouts on Izu Oshima, an island in the mouth of Tokyo Bay where the Covenant hoped to create a beachhead. Air-dropped onto the island, Machete found not just scouts, but engineering crews preparing a site for the construction of a base. Given the opportunity, Machete decided to test its affinity for sabotage, and used their SPI armor's camouflage to approach undetected, marking coordinates for artillery bombardment and placing remote explosives within the buildings under construction. The latter, however, resulted in their discovery by a overseeing the work. Killing the Covenant engineer set off its explosive harness, and with the alarm raised, Machete found itself engaged at once. Covering for Dyne and Tara, who'd been caught in the open, Amber put her flamethrower to use sowing chaos among the surprised Covenant, but drew their attention too well; the Sangheili Ultra in command rushed and impaled her on the prongs of an energy sword. In excruciating pain, Amber was saved only by her augmentations' response and Kodiak's reprisal. Detonating what explosives they'd planted to cover their escape, Amber fell unconscious as her teammates pulled her to their extraction point and evacuated the island, taking her directly to the medical facilities at Ryu Base, the defense command's headquarters. Held in a in the base's underground medical wing while replacement organs and tissue were , Amber was visited by her team as soon as she regained consciousness, and concerned them by reporting unusual noise not even the other Spartans' enhanced ears could detect. Though Machete had to return to action for the time being, this and her surviving such extreme wounds led their mission advisor Erin Coney to investigate her medical scans more closely. By the time Machete returned, Erin had discovered the illicit augmentations left by Commander Ambrose, and with Amber's increasingly frantic insistence that the noise she heard was growing louder, had begun petitioning her physician to sedate her. Rejecting the idea of being unconscious and helpless again, Amber attempted to break through the gel tank's glass, and as her team tried to calm her in the ensuing panic, a hole was blasted open in the sub-level's floor. While the others present were still stunned, Amber succeeded in breaking free and killing the first Covenant soldiers to come through the newly-opened tunnel with a shard of the tank's glass, giving the rest of Machete enough time to regain their wits and collapse it with grenades. Having foiled the attack from below thanks to the medical tank's gel amplifying her hearing, and her surgeries completed, Amber was cleared to rejoin her team on active combat duty. First, however, Lieutenant Coney pulled them aside to brief them on the additions Ambrose had made to their augmentations, and to grant them access to what was stored elsewhere in Tokyo: retired suits of the initial-production MJOLNIR Mark V armor. Outfitted with new weapons and armor, Machete took a more direct role in combat than they had ever trained to do, matching the strength and resilience of MJOLNIR with the necessary resourcefulness of SPARTAN-IIIs, from springing ambushes to supporting infantry in urban combat. They participated in various roles throughout the course of the battle, over the next week taking part in a Pelican assault on an approaching CAS-class assault carrier, helping broker a truce with the few remaining Sangheili forces after the , and repelling a Jiralhanae strike on Ryu Base itself led by the War Chieftain Attilus, during which Amber helped bring down the Type-52 Dragon his forces had constructed. After their rout, the Jiralhanae appeared to abandon their campaign in Japan, only for the UNSC to realize they were withdrawing to gather over East Africa as the arrived to complete the Covenant's true objective: the activation of a relic which opened a portal to the . With their forces exhausted and pockets of stranded enemy forces left to deal with, the UNSC sent only a small force with fleet in following them for one final battle, leaving Machete and the rest of humankind to wait and watch. Their wait ended just under a week later, as Vadum's fleet returned with news of the Covenant's final defeat and the destruction of . Though it meant the end of the war, Amber found the news more concerning than relieving, as she started to contemplate her place and those of the other Spartans in a galaxy without humanity threatened by a war of extermination. Time for this contemplation was short, however, as Kodiak volunteered Machete for numerous ad hoc tasks as reconstruction began, from search-and-rescue and hunting remaining Covenant soldiers to physical labor cleaning up debris. In the coming months, however, they found the UNSC would continue to have use for them, as the Covenant's fall left a sudden, sizeable power vacuum and numerous Covenant Remnant factions which would seek to fill it. Among them was Attilus, who'd not followed Truth through the Ark portal and was rapidly consolidating power as an independent warlord in former Covenant-conquered human space. At Erin's discretion, Machete was ordered to report aboard the [[UNSC Themistocles|UNSC Themistocles]] to join its tour of a number of former human colonies to survey them for resettlement, a post they would hold for the next four years. Aboard Themistocles Reestablishing Contact To Machete's surprise, they would not be the only members of Themistocles’ Spartan contingent: Vinh-030, a SPARTAN-II they'd briefly worked with in Japan, would be joining them as the detail's commander. While Morgan's study of their legendary predecessors bordered on obsession, Amber tried to interact with the senior Spartan as little as possible, trying to ignore her irritation that someone outside of Gamma Company's tight-knit cadre had been installed as their superior. It proved easier than she'd imagined, as the Themistocles would be getting underway ahead of most recolonization survey ships in January of 2553, tasked with ferrying Fleet Admiral on the first leg of his tour of surviving human colonies to reestablish contact and plan reconstruction efforts. These began with , where Machete accompanied Hood in dress uniforms both as alleged war heroes and capable bodyguards for Hood, as pro-Earth sentiment on the planet was in short supply after the UNSC abandoned its defense. Feeling largely out of place as Hood fruitlessly attempted to broker agreements, Amber and the rest of Machete were largely disappointed to learn of an actual incident taking place between Vinh and another SPARTAN-II on the planet, Randall, after the fact. Rendezvousing with another UNSC vessel within the week to hand off Hood, the Themistocles would continue its ongoing mission to make contact with human survivors of the war, among which would be the mountaintop-based colony of Stratos in 2554. Though Machete had to that point been content finding their own distractions as their superiors negotiated, the team was surprised when evidence turned up of a resurging Insurrection attempting to influence the colonial government, and began investigating immediately. Though Vinh had extensive experience in counter-insurgency operations, friction between her and Machete led Dyne to disobey orders and fall into a trap laid by Gustav Klein, incapacitating him and vanishing from all means of tracking his equipment. This ability to disappear left the team at a loss for explanation until Kodiak guessed the abundance of particular corrosion-resistant material in the site they'd raided meant their hideout was on Stratos' lowland surface, beneath a layer of acidic fog. Here, Amber's talents proved critical for the team, as she alone could traverse the surface in her HAZOP armor. It was she who confirmed the location of Klein's base, the Hellpit, and provided telemetry after entering for the rest of the team to assault it using , freeing Dyne and shutting down operations by the growing on the planet. As time went on, the Themistocles pushed further out into former human space and encountered alien colonies on conquered human worlds. Amber voiced qualms with the UEG's official position on these settlements—to imprison or push them offworld, through force if necessary—as they had been in place for sometimes decades and had become homes, but had little means to influence the decisions made, and accepted humans and former Covenant species could not presently, if ever, peacefully coexist. Often, Machete was called on to take part in skirmishes against Covenant settlements which had, with the breaking of the Covenant, fallen under the rulership of dozens of minor warlords. Among the strongest of these was Attilus, whose roving fleet extorted resources and press-ganged troops from a number of systems. After their first encounter with his forces, the Themistocles and other human vessels participating in reexpansion efforts came to be viewed first as targets for raiding, then legitimate threats to be answered with coordinated attacks. Following a skirmish with Attilus' forces in late 2555, during which Machete rescued a ship full of refugees fleeing imprisonment by one of their own kind, the Themistocles received a request from the to brief one of their commanders, , on what they'd learned of the San'Shyuum's whereabouts. Accepting in the interest of furthering cooperation with the Swords, Machete arrived at the outpost Exceeding Grasp and in giving their report learned 'Vadum intended to make peace with the San'Shyuum, when Attilus fell upon the station with his entire fleet. While none of these vessels approached the power of 'Vadum's carrier , the Sangheili vessel suffered from a longstanding lack of repair, and even with the Themistocles’ help could not prevent the station from being boarded. Amber, Dyne, and Morgan fought alongside 'Vadum against boarding parties led by the Stalker captain Sidonus and repelled them from the station, only to learn Attilus' true target had been a trophy held aboard the Intent: the , symbolic weapon of the last , , and had killed their teammate Tara and wounded Kodiak in its theft before escaping. Grieving for their childhood friend, Machete vowed to eliminate Attilus and received 'Vadum's promise of support when the day came. Conclave of the Feral Worlds Their chance would come just a few short months later in early 2556, as Attilus made his possession of the Fist well-known in order to draw other Jiralhanae to his service. Soon, he called for a meeting of warlords from throughout the Feral Worlds, those human colonies which had been settled by the Covenant, in the Salia system in a bid to unite them under him. Such an alliance would amount to a credible rival to the UNSC on its very border, and the UNSC called on nearby vessels, the Themistocles included, to gather as a task force to eliminate them all in a single strike. Before the ship responded, however, the leader of the San'Shyuum refugees they'd rescued discreetly contacted Machete for help. Though the UEG had granted them asylum, it had detained the refugees indefinitely and would not aid in freeing the other San'Shyuum held by the Prophet of Extinction, refusing to be officially involved in what it considered an 'internal affair.' Begging the Spartans to intercede, she passed on the coordinates of the station on which they were held, coinciding with the coordinates of Attilus' gathering. The UNSC attack to come would leave no survivors, likely dealing a final bow to the San'Shyuum population. Machete brought the information to the captain, Daiichi Kimura, who agreed to attempt a rescue mission ahead of the strike with help, once called upon, from Rtas 'Vadum and the Shadow of Intent. While Vinh, Kodiak, and a number of the Intent’s warriors would attack Attilus and his gathered warlords as a diversion, Amber, Dyne, and Morgan would lead Marine teams in the intended prison break. Upon emerging from slipspace, the Intent—having since received many repairs and its staff bolstered by Themistocles crew—engaged both Attilus' fleet and vessels held by a dozen warlords, clearing space for the Themistocles to board the space station hosting their summit. Making quick work of Jiralhanae in their way, Amber's team reached the San'Shyuum living quarters and found they had little need to convince their occupants; years of strict adherence to Extinction's plan had amounted to a dictatorship aboard the station which they could no longer stomach. In the process, however, they were attacked by Sidonus and his Stalkers while a lockdown halted their escape. While Morgan and Dyne engaged the Brutes, Amber took it upon herself to find a way to end the lockdown. Tracking the control systems from a security schematic, Amber alone entered the station's control center and there was confronted by the Prophet himself, who trapped her behind a . With the demon contained, Extinction returned to observing the space battle raging outside, showing Amber how poorly the Shadow of Intent was fairing. Rather than salvaged warships crippled by years without maintenance, Extinction had used the horded by his people after the Schism as Attilus' bargaining tool in the summit, gaining the vessels of warlords who pledged themselves to the Chieftain he'd long been manipulating in exchange for the repairs. Amber accused the Prophet of cruelty towards his own people, to which Extinction responded humanity had resorted to in the name of survival during the Human-Covenant War, and now looked to commit another—the UNSC had started planning their attack not when the summit was called, but when they had learned of the San'Shyuum's presence on the station. The summit had only been Extinction's way of luring the UNSC to attack when they were strongest. Knowing that, the Prophet asked Amber if, as a human, she still believed anything could be justified by mankind's survival as he did the San'Shyuum's. To both their startlement, however, Amber answered she did not. In the meantime, the task force had arrived and lent aid to the Shadow of Intent, but neither side yet had a clear advantage. Seeing this, the Prophet of Extinction realized even after all his planning, the future of the San'Shyuum was now uncertain at best, and could not accept it. The Themistocles’ arrival, however, presented a new possibility; if their rescue succeeded, the more powerful UNSC would be forced to acknowledge and protect them. In light of this, the Prophet ended the lockdown and released Amber, asking her to save his people. Then, to ensure the outcome of the battle, he ordered his Huragok to deactivate the energy shielding across all of Attilus' fleet. As the UNSC and Sangheili turned the tide in their favor, Amber executed the Prophet and returned to her team, successfully evacuating the station's San'Shyuum population aboard Themistocles. In the battle's aftermath, the Jiralhanae fleet had been obliterated along with nearly every Covenant warlord in former human space, including Attilus, though Vinh had been wounded seriously enough in fighting him to opt for retirement. The UNSC launched an inquiry into the Themistocles’ actions, but these were covered for by Shipmaster 'Vadum's insistence he had attacked based on his own intelligence, and the Themistocles had only insisted on accompanying him for his protection. The sudden scrutiny on the ship posed a threat to Machete, however, as discovery of their involvement would lead to questions concerning how they had avoided Admiral 's directive to reassign all Gamma Company Spartans to covert roles within ONI. Though they regretted to leave the ship which had been their home the last three years, Machete followed Erin's plan to quickly transfer off the vessel and instead integrate into the largest contingent of Spartans anywhere: aboard the [[UNSC Infinity (Demons of Hope)|UNSC Infinity]]. Her discussion with the Prophet, however, Amber would never mention to her team. Aboard Infinity For Team Machete, redubbed Fireteam Machete, the transition from the sparsely-crewed auxiliary Themistocles to Infinity’s onboard population of over 17,000 was more drastic than expected. For all the logistical priority given the vessel, privacy was in perpetually short supply, a resource Amber deeply valued and was in more need of than ever as she reflected on her own regard for human life. Worse, even surrounded by the hundreds of fellow Spartans on Infinity’s dedicated S-deck, Machete found little in common with their new SPARTAN-IV comrades, who regarded the SPARTAN-II and -III programs as immoral experiments despite what their subjects had sacrificed and accomplished. Rebelling against their patronizing, and clashing with Infinity’s Spartan contingent Commander in particular, Machete kept mostly to the company of other Gamma teams aboard. They also defiantly continued referring to themselves with Spartan tags instead of using the last names which had been revealed with their declassified service records, despite the point of Erin's reassigning them to Infinity being to avoid the eyes of ONI. Being referred to as 'Spartan Gibson' brought back thoughts of the family Amber had lost for the first time in years, which were the last things her introspection needed at that time. A few factors worked in Machete's favor, however, the first of which was their reunion with now-Master Sergeant Stacker. Their former drill instructor was a great help in adapting them to the atmosphere of the Infinity, his personal connections among the extensive crew enabling him to introduce the younger Spartans to their own healthy diversions. While Kodiak and Dyne were allowed to join the technical support staff for S-Deck's holographic training chamber and Morgana was engaged by the complex day-to-day management of a large vessel, Stacker managed to secure Amber the relatively simple duty of making security rounds through the nearly-deserted emergency storage bays, during which she would have long hours to herself. With relative peace of mind restored, Amber and her teammates managed to find a comfortable routine to fall into. July 21st, 2557 had been the anticipated end of the Infinity’s months-long journey to reach a discovered by the research outpost on , a prospect which excited the SPARTAN-IIIs on board as their training home of Onyx had, as they discovered later, been as well. Upon arrival, however, the vessel was scanned by a beam of light emanating from the planet and suffered a ship-wide power failure, beginning to drift into the planet's gravitational pull. Within the supercarrier's compartments, this caused incredible chaos as artificial gravity fluctuated and even the most redundant safety systems failed to prevent catastrophes. Amber and Morgan were caught in a sealed corridor adjacent to Infinity’s reservoir tanks when a bulkhead ruptured, and acted quickly to save several crewmen from drowning. Using personal coms, the pair made contact with Erin and agreed to meet their teammates in S-Deck's Armor Bay. Despite a challenging journey there, the four Gammas arrived in time for Amber and Kodiak to suit up before the Armor Bay's automated gantries lost power. Better equipped, Kodiak and Amber left to respond to the cascading emergencies at Erin's discretion while their teammates attempted to restore power and suit more Spartans. Now able to traverse compartments exposed to fire or vacuum, Erin directed the pair near the outer hull, attempting to rescue the ship's third officer, , who'd been left stranded by a series of hull breaches. With an oxygen mask in hand, the pair reached him as the Infinity was pulled into Requiem's atmosphere, and were forced to pass through an open compartment on their return. As they traversed it, a tremor hit which threw Kodiak through the breach and clear of the ship entirely as it fell, leaving Amber with no recourse but to escort Bradley to the bridge alone. After the ship had crash-landed, remaining miraculously intact, Amber joined in repelling the Covenant Remnant forces of until the arrival of drove off the leading them. Afterwards, sure in her convictions of Kodiak's survival, Amber and the rest of Machete demanded permission to find and recover their team leader, to which Infinity Command agreed—but only in conjunction with the SPARTAN-IV Fireteam Valiant and a team from led by Dr. Taranee Connors to document anything they found. Though Machete was reluctant to work so closely with SPARTAN-IVs, the teams agreed to search a rough area where Kodiak had been projected to fall, unable to locate him more precisely with Infinity’s AI, , offline and ambient interference from the planet's abundant Forerunner technology blocking his transponder. Once on the ground, the combined fireteams quickly encountered resistance from Requiem's forces, which Amber's flamethrower proved ineffective against. Their luck changed, however, when they came into close enough range to pick up Kodiak's IFF, and agreed to meet at a nearby spire structure, only for the Prometheans to renew their attack. Cut off, Valiant's leader Leon Sikowsky opted to split up as a diversion, giving Machete time to recover their own teammate. Though the Gammas successfully reunited at the spire, Dr. Connors became fascinated with a display embedded in the structure while Machete aided Valiant's retreat and disappeared. Under fire and without time to look for her as their extraction arrived, the fireteams returned to Infinity and were quickly debriefed. Though Kodiak had suffered a broken arm among other injuries in the fall, he would be able to return to duty soon, and Valiant's willingness to risk their lives for the missing Gamma considerably improved Fireteam Machete's relations with the ship's SPARTAN-IVs. The Infinity, meanwhile, would leave Requiem to repair the more extensive damage it had received in its crash and return to the Sol system. Amber and the rest of Machete would be aboard on standby when Infinity engaged the during the . Following an extensive refit, the Infinity returned to Requiem on February 7th, 2558, six months after its discovery, with a larger ground complement, including more Spartans. Blasting through the Covenant task force guarding the Shield World's internal portal, Infinity deployed these forces and swiftly took control of a number of structures within, giving Infinity Science the opportunity to study the Forerunner technology they contained. After helping secure a site designated Hawking Base, however, Machete would be recalled to Infinity, and for the following month were placed on a rotating roster of on-call Spartan teams ready to carry out operations on Requiem as required. Machete's chances at seeing action were somewhat limited, however, by Spartan Commander Palmer's reluctance to use them, which resulted in further butting of heads between the Gamma team and their commanding officer. But unlike her teammates, Amber seemed unconcerned by Palmer's perceived bias against the team, content to remain on-ship until called upon, reviewing dossiers on the Covenant Remnant members speculated to be on Requiem and reports on the scientific teams' findings. Before long, however, the fighting would come to her even on Infinity. An artifact recovered by activated, allowing Promethean forces to teleport aboard while the Covenant launched an attack from outside. Machete were among the Spartans onboard when the attack came and, thanks to their own improvements to their armor stations, some of the first to respond. With help from the ship's new AI, , Machete partially locked down routes leading away from some of the Covenant's entry points, funneling them to the training deck where Kodiak and Dyne could manipulate the terrain at will, giving Amber and Morgan overwhelming advantages and allowing them to neutralize dozens of Covenant troops each single-handed. Though 'Mdama's forces succeeded in capturing a high-value target before they were driven off, they failed to disable or destroy the Infinity itself thanks in part to the number of warriors Machete had managed to divert. Celebrating the victory afterward, Amber began to take more notice of the romantic relationships present between many members of the crew, and the one between Morgan and Dyne in particular. Troubled they seemed closer now than she was with any of the team, Amber sought to reconnect with Shepard-G127, whose team had also been brought aboard Infinity. Though he seemed to share her enthusiasm in reacquainting, their interactions were frustratingly awkward, discouraging her further attempts. Returning to field deployments was exactly what Amber needed to clear her head, and threw herself eagerly into Infinity’s efforts to learn where Jul 'Mdama had taken after abducting her in the raid. Machete was one of several teams dispatched to investigate potential leads, but in raiding a Covenant camp found a new potential research site instead. With the Requiem Campaign swiftly coming to a close, Machete was ordered to stay on-site as security, during which the scientific team they were attached to deciphered references to the location of a powerful Forerunner weapon on Stavros, a planet in the furthest reaches of the . Before determining the nature of the relic, however, Infinity issued an emergency evacuation order, as Requiem's orbit around its sun had been set to rapidly decay by 'Mdama. After a swift retreat, Machete was safely aboard when SPARTAN-IV fireteams freed the Infinity from gravitational anchors in time for the vessel to escape the shield world's destruction with a slipspace jump. Desertion Immediately after their flight from Requiem, the Infinity was recalled to Earth for debriefing and transfer of recovered research material, but 'Mdama's lead gleaning intelligence from the Shield World meant no delay could be afforded securing the possible Forerunner weapon on Stavros. Persuaded by Infinity’s intelligence division, Captain Lasky dispatched one of the ship's ''Strident''-class escorts, Sub-vessel 7, and to avoid their presence on the mothership being discovered by internal review, Erin arranged for Fireteam Machete to be part of the mission. Once aboard, however, they found to their surprise the Agent Baines assigned to lead the mission was a former fellow member of Gamma Company, then known as Wynne-G327. Since the war's end, Wynne had left the Spartans to become a field agent for ONI, and met her former comrades' welcome with stoicism, leading to an uncomfortable time spent in close quarters while the ship transitioned through slipspace. Arriving at Stavros, the vessel's crew were surprised to find not 'Mdama's Covenant awaiting them, but human and Jiralhanae civilian settlements both colonizing the world—one of the latter of which had been founded on the very coordinates the weapon was supposedly buried. Fearing it had already been found, the commander ordered the destruction of the planet's communications satellites to cut off all contact with the outside galaxy, and dispatched Marines and Spartan Fireteams Machete, Ivy, Ymir, and Rampart under Agent Baines' leadership to secure the alien colony. The colony turned out to be little more than a village, its inhabitants left on their own after the warlord they paid tribute to had perished at the Conclave of the Feral Worlds. With its warriors gone with him, surrounding the settlement and rounding up its inhabitants proved no challenge for the Marines and Spartans, preventing any calls for reinforcement from the other colonies nearby. When addressed by Wynne, an infirm Jiralhanae elder came forward, offering to show them the temple they sought, the place which had kept their faith strong even years after the Covenant's breaking, in exchange for the promise of leaving the village unharmed. Wynne accepted, and chose Machete Team to help her clear the Forerunner relic. Just after entering, however, word came from Sub-vessel 7 that a pair of Covenant ships had entered the system, and with the ship unable to effectively delay them, they would likely be under attack soon. Ordering the rest of the team to turn back and help establish a defense to buy them time, Wynne continued with only Amber for protection. Losing contact with the surface soon after, Wynne and Amber followed the old Jiralhanae to a central chamber filled with active Forerunner technology displaying a holographic model of the Milky Way, with Stavros highlighted at the end of a long line. While the elder declared it a map leading to Stavros as a significant point of worship, it was Amber who realized Stavros was actually a destination, though whatever lay in deep space at the end of the line had ceased movement. After documenting everything, Wynne—determined to return this information to the UNSC—attempted to tear the machine's data crystal from its housing when the old Jiralhanae intervened, horrified by her vandalism of a sacred artifact. When his efforts injured Wynne, Amber moved to subdue him, only for Wynne to shoot the aged alien dead. Stunned by the needless murder, Amber expressed her anger only to be rebuked by Wynne pointing out he was a member of a hostile species who had attacked her first. Her forcibly removing the crystal, however, caused it to shatter, rendering it and the temple it powered worthless. Returning to the surface, the pair learned upon restoring contact with the other Spartans that 'Mdama's troops had landed in force, and would soon overrun their defense. With the Forerunner relic sabotaged, Baines asserted the colonists who'd spent hours every day in their temple were now the only remaining record of where the Forerunner weapon really lay, and could not be allowed to fall into Covenant hands. But without the strength to hold or time to evacuate them, only one means of denying them existed: their total obliteration, for which she ordered Morgan to coordinate an artillery strike from the Sub-vessel to wipe out the settlement. No sooner had she done this, however, than Baines was struck by an unexpected source—Amber. Convinced Baines' decision was rooted in her own hatred of aliens the SPARTAN-III Program had encouraged and unwilling to take part in the slaughter of so many innocents—alien or not—she knocked the ONI agent unconscious and told Morgan to abort the strike, only for Morgan to refuse without Baines' confirmation. Determined to prevent the attack, Amber made the long run to Morgan's overwatch position on a distant ridge while the other Spartans were too busy engaging the Covenant to intervene. Upon reaching Morgan, Amber pleaded with her friend to stop, but was met with Morgan's own certainty in doing whatever was necessary to protect the UNSC. Unable to persuade her, Amber attempted to destroy the targeting equipment—and Morgan blocked her. Neither backing down, Amber wrestled with her teammate to reach the equipment, holding the upper hand in physical combat but hesitant to inflict the real hurt it would take to get past her. Frustrated someone so close to her wouldn't agree her actions were right, Amber spat accusations which infuriated even someone as normally dispassionate as Morgan, their other teammates demanding or pleading with them to stop over COMs all the while. Realizing she could only win by harming her friend, Amber's resolve wavered just when Morgana, knowing she was steadily losing, drew her sidearm. On reflex, Amber threw the only thing she had within easy reach at Morgan to protect herself: her flamethrower. A shot was fired, and the weapon's tank exploded—killing Morgan instantly. In shock for what might've been minutes, when Amber finally regained the ability to move, she left the corpse and the active targeting equipment behind and fled horrified from the site of the battle, deserting her post and running aimlessly into Stavros' wilderness. Soon after, the UNSC would extract its forces and carry out the bombing of the settlement, exterminating its inhabitants and denying the Covenant remnant their intelligence. Lost Breaking as much of her armor's tracking and communication hardware as she knew how to do, Amber was cut off from the constant feeds of UNSC tactical information for perhaps the first time in her life, finding herself alone and frightened by the uncertainty of her situation. With her comrades extracted, Sub-vessel 7 could have retreated and let the Covenant secure the planet, or UNSC reinforcements might have arrived to drive them off and search for her, putting her in danger in either case. Knowing she had to put as much distance between herself and the Forerunner site as possible, Amber crossed a mountain range within a week of her desertion, moving only at night and hiding out during the day to minimize any chance of detection. Upon at last reaching the continent's edge, Amber found shelter in the scuttled remains of the transport ship the Jiralhanae had crashed during Stavros' settlement, protruding out of the water less than a mile offshore. With a hideout she could secure, Amber settled in to lay low as long as her emergency rations would last. She had scarcely started thinking of alternatives when two days later, her hunter caught up with her. Found Personality and Traits Growing up with only the characters of parables and fairy tales her mother read to her for friends, Amber developed a sense of justice which ultimately proved more powerful than her loyalty to her own species. Unlike the vast majority of SPARTAN-IIIs, she had not experienced loss at the hands of the Covenant, and thus was prone to view them more objectively than her comrades who'd had their desires for revenge encouraged throughout years of training and service. She took very well, however, to the public image of the SPARTAN-IIs presented to Gamma Company in the process of learning about their predecessors, and would in battle strive to be as courageous as the heroes of her childhood. This fearlessness, together with her exceptional capabilities for a Gamma Spartan, made her an inspirational presence in the field. The more frequently she and her team took the field, however, the more often they encountered instances of humans committing acts just as reprehensible as the atrocities their instructors had railed against the Covenant for. Numerous times, Machete encountered Covenant colonists driven from their homes or massacred by returning human populations, often either willfully overlooked or actively enabled by the UEG. While Amber understood these acts of vengeance in return for decades of a war of extermination, she invariably felt sympathy for the victims, many of whom were civilians uninvolved in the ended war. More troubling to her were the moral questions coming to light about the SPARTAN program, which undermined her conception of Spartans as heroes. It took the events of the Conclave of the Feral Worlds, learning of ONI's intention to wipe out the San'Shyuum as the Covenant had nearly exterminated humanity, to realize she didn't inherently empathize with her own kind more than any other denizens of the galaxy. This would, in 2558, lead her to disobey orders and try to avert the slaughter of Covenant civilians on Stavros, ending in the accidental death of her teammate. Horrified by her part in her best friend's death and fearing the lengths ONI might go to punish a traitorous Spartan, Amber fled and chose a near-certain suicide over returning when confronted by her team leader. Though she survived the encounter, she was for months after deprived of the drug compounds meant to stabilize the additional augmentations Gamma Company received. Combined with her failed attempts to re-ingratiate herself with human populations, Amber emerged from a period of instability with a newfound and deeply-held misanthropy, judging humans from the position of one bred to sacrifice herself for them as being unworthy of her sacrifice. Weapons and Armor * Stealthier, lighter, and—most significantly—cheaper than MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor, SPI formed the universal standard for SPARTAN-IIIs. Though lacking in its counterpart's legendary durability and resilient energy shielding, the SPI was covered in a complex lace of photoreactive texture panels which could camouflage the user nearly as well as Covenant active camouflage technology, and without its glaring heat signature. Gamma Company were deployed with the revised Mark II iteration, which featured additions meant by Commander Ambrose to improve the armor's lacking survivability. The effectiveness of these additions would be called into question as soon as Amber's first deployment in the Battle of Earth, when Amber unfortunately encountered an Elite in close combat and was impaled by its Energy Sword, requiring emergency medevac to Ryu Base. Acquiring MJOLNIR Armor shortly thereafter, Amber never looked back. * Developed by private armories on contract for the Materials Group, the initial production model of the first MJOLNIR iteration to include energy shielding had, for all its durability, a markedly short lifespan, being supplanted by an internally-produced mainline version within a year. Upon retirement, however, rather than be disassembled for scrap, a great many of these early predecessor suits were transferred to storage in ONI's Ryu Base in Japan, where they were found by Erin Coney and commandeered for Machete Team's use. Among those available, Amber found a complete suit of HAZOP-variant MJOLNIR, specially adapted to cope with extremely inhospitable environments which would come to suit her style of scorched earth combat. Resistant to heat beyond even normal MJOLNIR limits, the suit allowed Amber to make use of her chosen weapon with impunity, wading into the very flames she would unleash on her foes. Her suit also proved an asset during Machete's operations on Stratos, where its resistance to high pressure allowed Amber to operate on the planet's surface, though corroded by the toxic and ultra-dense atmosphere, after which it was refinished and repainted gold. It was eventually abandoned on Oasis when Amber fled the UNSC, lost sinking into the depths of a vast sea. Like the rest of Machete, Amber's suit bore the orange and white color scheme of a test suit, which became the team's standard. * Successor to the UNSC's earlier use of the by Hellbringer troops, the M7057 redesigned the human military's principle incendiary weapon as a self-contained unit, enabling its use by soldiers without the accompaniment of a dedicated suit. Flame weapons proved devastatingly effective against the Covenant due not only to their heavy emphasis on infantry, but because the raw heat such weapons created quickly shorted out Elite energy shielding and ruptured Grunts' pressurized methane tanks. Their use entailed extreme risk, given Covenant strength and desire for close quarters combat, but with their survivability, the weapon in a Spartan's hands was free to engulf whole lances of enemy troops. Amber was still one of the few to willingly favor such a weapon, as its emphasis on raw power over precision seldom matched the commando operations Spartans were tasked with, but Amber and her team were rarely so conventional or discriminating in their application of force. Notes and References Category:Gamma Company Category:SPARTAN Category:SPARTAN-IIIs Category:ZOD Characters